Page 4 December 15, 2016 Hawthorne Looks to Turn Tides in Ocean League By Adam Serrao The Hawthorne Cougars girls’ basketball team has hit the hardwood to embark on another challenging season that players, fans and head coach Paul Mason all hope ends successfully this year. It has been a few years since the team can say it experienced a successful season, at least statistically, but a new year brings with it new opportunity. A young and athletic roster combined with a first-year head coach in Mason may just be what the Lady Cougars need to provide the team with a winning recipe. The 2012-’13 season was the last time the Lady Cougars girls had a positive record at the end of the year. That season, the team finished with a 15-13 mark and went 7-3 in league play--good enough for a second place finish in the Ocean League standings and a playoff berth. Though the Lady Cougars have had playoff potential in the recent past and have often made it into the first round of the CIF postseason, they’ve consistently had trouble getting past that hurdle. Last season was one full of ups and downs for Hawthorne. After opening the year with two straight losses, the Lady Cougars rattled off a six-game winning streak to keep themselves in contention. A less-than-stellar league play season followed, in which the girls went 2-8 overall--beating the likes of only Beverly Hills in a 46-8 blowout, and Santa Monica. The team’s poor record within its own division dropped Hawthorne down in the standings. A fifth place finish out of six teams isn’t necessarily where the Lady Cougars envisioned they’d be at the end of the season, but their standing was still good enough to get them into the playoffs. A first round date with Cerritos ended in a 67-25 loss, concluding Hawthorne’s season rather abruptly, but the team is back this year and ready to improve on last year. The Lady Cougars will have to get the job done this time without the services of six departing seniors who were on the team a year ago. Three of those seniors include captains Brianna Anderson, Tiffany Harris and Kierra Wilder. Returning to the team, however, is junior guard Brianna Mendoza, who will be joined by newly appointed captains Diamond Mitchell and Gloria Jones. An entirely new crop of players (with the exception of Mendoza), in addition to a new head coach, may make the process of gelling together more trying than it might otherwise be. That trying process reared its head in the Lady Cougars’ first game of this season when they took a loss to Leuzinger in a rivalry match that ended with a final score of 90-4. The only points Hawthorne was able to muster came on one basket in the third quarter and another in the fourth quarter. Despite the horrific loss, the Lady Cougars were able to come out and forget about the past with a 56-31 win over George Washington Prep. There’s no telling what the rest of the season will have in store of Hawthorne, but more games like the one against George Washington and less like the one versus Leuzinger would make everyone involved very happy. Lawndale High The Lawndale Cardinals girls’ basketball team is coming off of an extremely successful season within the Ocean League. The Lady Cardinals put up a 7-3 record in league play and finished in second place in the overall standings. Lawndale seems to be contending with the Culver City Centaurs every year. Their rivals have finished in first place and won the Ocean League title five seasons in a row now. Lawdale’s head coach Anthony Gibson is confident that this will be the year that his team will overtake Culver City and finally capture an Ocean League title of its own. Leading the charge for the Lady Cardinals will be a player that came over from the Hawthorne Lady Cougars. Summer Grant, who played well as a freshman last season, transferred to Lawndale for her sophomore year and will now join a roster full of talented seniors. Captains Jazzmin Oddie (forward) and Kamsi Metu (center) will lead a roster that also expects key contributions from Rejinae Crandall and Zyaire Nelson. Crandall was perhaps the team’s most explosive player from a season ago. This year’s season is already underway and the Lady Cardinals have gotten out to a slow start. A 1-3 record through the team’s first four games should certainly improve, however, in what will be a long, competitive season. Inglewood High The Inglewood Sentinels girls’ basketball team is longing for a season like the one it had in 2013-’14 when it finished in second place in the Ocean League standings and went all the way to the championship game of the CIF Division 3A playoffs. Since that time, the Lady Sentinels have not only transferred over to the Bay League, but have also only managed to win one game over the course of two entire basketball seasons. A combined record of 1-42 with only one league play win over Morningside has the girls’ basketball team and its head coach Charles Michael Cain searching everywhere for answers. If you’ve been around the Inglewood girls’ basketball team over the last two seasons, then the beginning of this year didn’t necessarily bode well either. The team has started off at 0-2 with losses to Marlborough (58-10) and Banning (44-27). Senior captain Chinyere Osuigwe will try to get things turned around for the team in what has the potential to be another very long season. The team will hope to get at least a few wins on the board this year and somehow stay out of the cellar of the Bay League standings. • –Asixlion@earthlink.net Former Eagle Finds Cross Country Success at El Camino Brianna Harmon, former El Segundo High School cross country standout, continues her running ways at El Camino College. Brianna was the varsity team captain for the 2015 league champion cross country Eagles. Now running for the Warriors, she was the only female El Camino cross country runner to advance to the state championship round in Fresno 2016. • Brianna with men’s cross country team in Fresno. Photos by Tom Harmon Brianna Harmon with El Camino cross country coach Dean Lofgren
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